Gratitude and personal functioning among earthquake survivors in Indonesia

This study examined the potential role of gratitude as a protective factor against posttraumatic stress (PTS) symptomatology and global distress (GD) in the wake of disasters. Using longitudinal methodology, we assessed positive coping, gratitude, PTS symptomatology, and GD among 310 survivors of the 2009 Padang earthquake in Indonesia five and eight months after the disaster. Psychological hardiness and neuroticism were also measured at baseline. A general prototype model was constructed to predict scores on each of the dependent variables (GD and PTS symptomatology) at both time points. Hardiness and neuroticism were associated with GD and PTS at Time 1, but gratitude and positive coping had concurrent associations with these variables at Time 2. The unique association between gratitude and impairment at Time 2 suggests that it may play a role in adjustment to extreme disaster, but that it takes time to do so.     

Comparing the Functioning of Youth and Adult Partnerships for Health Promotion

Youth partnerships are a promising but understudied strategy for prevention and health promotion. Specifically, little is known about how the functioning of youth partnerships differs from that of adult partnerships. Accordingly, this study compared the functioning of youth partnerships with that of adult partnerships. Several aspects of partnership functioning, including leadership, task focus, cohesion, participation costs and benefits, and community support, were examined. Standardized partnership functioning surveys were administered to participants in three smoke‐free youth coalitions (n = 44; 45 % female; 43 % non‐Hispanic white; mean age = 13) and in 53 Communities That Care adult coalitions (n = 673; 69 % female; 88 % non‐Hispanic white; mean age = 49). Multilevel regression analyses showed that most aspects of partnership functioning did not differ significantly between youth and adult partnerships. These findings are encouraging given the success of the adult partnerships in reducing community‐level rates of substance use and delinquency. Although youth partnership functioning appears to be strong enough to support effective prevention strategies, youth partnerships faced substantially more participation difficulties than adult partnerships. Strategies that youth partnerships can use to manage these challenges, such as creative scheduling and increasing opportunities for youth to help others directly, are discussed.     

Relationships between regulatory temperament dimensions and self-regulatory behaviors at 4 and 6 months of age

The present study focused on relationships between temperament and behavior in early regulation development. Unlike most studies on the topic, we observed infant behavior in a naturalistic playful situation rather than in experimental stressful procedure, and employed temperament measures uniquely reflecting regulatory dispositions rather than a global measure of reactivity. The infant's self-regulatory behaviors were observed at 4 and 6 months during face-to-face interactions and regulatory dimensions were assessed at 4 months. We found that low intensity pleasure and soothability dimensions, related to the infant physical and social experience, respectively, significantly affected regulatory behavior and their influence showed to depend on the infant's age, with the former dimension being influential at the earlier age and the latter being influential when the behavior was observed at the later age. Results are interpreted on the light of a dynamic view of regulation development.     

Effects of the Student Success Skills Program on Executive Functioning Skills,Feelings of Connectedness,and Academic Achievement in a Predominantly Hispanic,Low‐Income Middle School District

The authors examined the effects of the Student Success Skills program on executive functioning, feelings of connectedness, and academic achievement of a sample of 193 middle school students in a predominantly Hispanic and economically challenged school district in the southwestern United States. Using multilevel regression analyses in a two‐level randomized design, the authors found treatment effects for multiple executive functioning scales, feelings of connectedness to classmates, and mathematics and reading achievement.     

Brief report: Response inhibition and processing speed in children with motor difficulties and developmental coordination disorder

A previous study reported that children with poor motor skills, classified as having motor difficulties (MD) or Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD), produced more errors in a motor response inhibition task compared to typically developing (TD) children but did not differ in verbal inhibition errors. The present study investigated whether these groups differed in the length of time they took to respond in order to achieve these levels of accuracy, and whether any differences in response speed could be explained by generally slow information processing in children with poor motor skills. Timing data from the Verbal Inhibition Motor Inhibition test were analyzed to identify differences in performance between the groups on verbal and motor inhibition, as well as on processing speed measures from standardized batteries. Although children with MD and DCD produced more errors in the motor inhibition task than TD children, the current analyses found that they did not take longer to complete the task. Children with DCD were slower at inhibiting verbal responses than TD children, while the MD group seemed to perform at an intermediate level between the other groups in terms of verbal inhibition speed. Slow processing speed did not account for these group differences. Results extended previous research into response inhibition in children with poor motor skills by explicitly comparing motor and verbal responses, and suggesting that slow performance, even when accurate, may be attributable to an inefficient way of inhibiting responses, rather than slow information processing speed per se.     

Being positive despite illness: The contribution of positivity to the quality of life of cancer patients

Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine the longitudinal relationship between Positivity (POS), defined as a stable disposition to view at experience under a positive outlook, and physical and psychological functioning in a sample of cancer patients immediately after diagnosis and one year later.

Methods: A total of 110 patients (40% males) with pulmonary, colorectal and breast cancer, aged 30–75 (M age = 59.62; SD = 10.33), have been prospectively enrolled between 2012 and 2013, at the S. Andrea Hospital in Rome. All patients were previously aware of their diagnosis. A follow-up one year after diagnosis was conducted. We used structural equation modeling in order to analyse the specific effects of POS on functioning impairment from diagnosis to follow up.

Results: POS was associated with less functioning impairment both at diagnosis and follow-up assessments. Furthermore, POS level at diagnosis continued to be associated with less functioning impairment one year later, after controlling for its stability.

Conclusions: Patients with higher level of POS tended to report less symptoms associated with negative affect such as anxiety and despondency and to preserve their habitual relationships and social roles. POS may act as a basic disposition that sustains patients’ efforts to deal efficaciously with severe illness, by complying with medical treatment and using cognitive strategies that enable individuals to cope with concurrent and prospective challenges of illness.